Shadows
by Illusive Writings
Summary: From a prompt on castlefanficprompts. What happens when homicide Detective Kate Beckett and a mystery writer Richard Castle meet and he does all he can to shadow her on her cases? What happens when they find out she's a vampire and he's a werewolf? Urban!Fantasy AU
1. Prologue

_Sometimes the right prompt comes out of nowhere and all you can do is write it. Being a fan of movies like Underworld and anything related, I felt compelled to write this AU. Also, the lack of urban fantasy AUs was another big push for me to write this. To anyone that's been reading my other works, the two ongoing stories about Star Wars, don't worry, they're not abandoned. Just on hiatus. _

_Thanks to Alex from castlefanfics on Tumblr for the beta reading, God knows I need it and to alyssinmymind for the artwork. I owe you a lot. _

* * *

><p><strong>Prologue<strong>

For centuries they had been only material for legends and folk tales. Superstition fed myths about the immortal creatures of the night, tales to scare children and keep them in line with the threat of the _boogeyman _that would come and take them at night if they didn't behave.

Witches flying on broomsticks cursing people, fairies helping them. Corpses returning from their graves, brainless and craving human flesh, troubled spirits of the dead, haunting the living with their presence, the dangerous werewolves hunting during the night o the full moon, in the woods, howling and banqueting on herds and the occasional traveler. The fascinating and elegant vampires, feeding on the blood of the living, the most dangerous of all for their similarity with their helpless victims. With the discoveries of the ancient Egypt tombs and the mummies, another kind of monster became famous, ancient curses falling upon those who dared to disturb their millennial sleep.

Names changed with the culture and the language, even their characteristics weren't uniform, the descriptions were diversified through the years, but in every culture of the world there were legends that told the stories of the immortals. These stories so famous that with years, and some refinements and with the help of history and the genius minds of writers, they became the horror stories that are known today. John Polidori helped shape the figure of the vampire, which inspired Bram Stoker to create Count Dracula, based on the story of bloody Vlad The Impaler, an historical figure from Romania. Gervase Of Tilbury was credited for one of the first descriptions of lycanthropes and old women with expertise in healing with herbs and flowers were described as witches by the superstitious crowds, their hate fueled by religious ignorance. Fairies became famous when authors such as the Grimm Brothers and their colleagues created the traditional fairy tales that Walt Disney transposed on the silver screen. Mary Shelley and her Creature gave birth to the application of science in horror literature.

By the time the twentieth century had come, these creatures, once feared and a cause of distress among the populations all around the world, became a source of entertainment. Authors and actors becoming famous for their portrayal of monsters and various folk creatures. Most of the movies in the early years of cinema featured these creatures, with zombies, vampires and werewolves becoming essentially a cultural phenomenon throughout the world. They lost their scary characteristics and were seen more as romanticized figures that once were used to keep kids in line. People dressed like them for Halloween, Hollywood made billions with films about what once used to intimidate people.

Immortals had become a business.

And unbeknownst to humans, that business helped the _real_ immortals thrive and integrate with society. Despite being relegated to creatures that had spawned the legends that had been told for centuries, werewolves and vampires did actually exist. Hidden from the world, they had lived for thousands of years along with humans, trying not to be seen.

And they had managed to remain hidden, to keep their existence tied to legends and ancient lore that no one believed anymore. Until the mid-seventies, with the advancement of medicine, new diagnostic tests were created and those tests caught diseases better and faster than before, but they _also _foundsomething else. There were abnormalities in some specimens' blood, differences that made their blood _thicker_, in a sense, with increased cellular functionality, faster mitosis, better oxygen transportation and an extremely efficient immune system. Upon lab testing, those samples of blood were completely immune to every disease, be it a virus or bacteria, as well as immune to every type of poison.

They performed test after test, until someone tried to expose some samples to a powerful UV light source, in reaction to which a part of the samples deteriorated. If exposure was long enough, deterioration was beyond repair. Thinking about a new form of porphyria, the tests went on until further research and the advancement in DNA technology brought an incredible discovery. The DNA of some people, a very small community spread throughout the US – and possibly the world - according to the CDC, carried an unknown pool of genes that had never been observed since the invention of DNA testing. At first it was thought to be a mutation brought on by the still-going evolution of the species, however when some of the owners of those genes were questioned about any possible difference between them and the standard human being the incredible truth had been revealed when a scared vampire teenager pressured by the CDC investigators, told them the truth about his nature.

That's how immortals were discovered.

The news spread all over the world faster than light, leaving humanity baffled and unsure of what to do. According to the legends, immortals were dangerous killing machines, feeding on human blood and flesh to survive, sleeping in coffins or hunting in packs at night. Finding out that, after all, they weren't just stories designed to tingle our senses and provide us thrills during slumber parties, was a shock for everyone.

In some areas of the world witch-hunts broke out and immortals were driven out and blamed for things that were completely unrelated to them. Fear and hate were the first emotions that spread, along with shock. Some were killed, because even if they were apparently not able to age, there were some weapons that could kill them all too well.

But with time, opinion on their existence became different, the change was slow but it happened and new laws were written to include them in society. Throughout the nineties, the world slowly became, year by year, more _immortal friendly_. Some people were still wary of them, there were some religious groups that advocated for their death, not too different for those hate groups that detested homosexuality, although the situation was a lot different. Hate groups against immortals were scared of their power, so usually kept away from them and attacked using only words, hate groups against homosexuals didn't care and often acted violently against them. In a twisted way, immortals had it easier.

At least werewolves did.

Lycanthropes could hide in a crowd more easily, they didn't have specific signs of their species on their body, by the time they reached adulthood most had learned how to control their transformation and weren't a slave of their mood anymore. Legends said they changed only during the full moon, but it wasn't true: a werewolf changed into his or her lycanthropic shape when in a foul mood, when in pressing need and when scared, or at will, when they learned how to do it. They didn't have special marks, or any visible difference between them and a normal human being.

And there was nothing supernatural about it, they weren't bitten by cursed wolves under the full moon, werewolves were a different form of humans. They weren't part of the same species, they weren't _homo sapiens sapiens_. They had been dubbed _homo lupus sapiens _by scientists, but they had nothing in common with wolves on a biologic point of view. They had a similar morphology when they changed, although they retained their two-legged posture and their features morphed to a more beast-like appearance, with a slightly elongated muzzle containing sharp teeth, and their nails grew to sharp claws. Their musculoskeletal structure changed, they grew bigger, more imposing than their human form, but their basic anatomy didn't change drastically. Some of them grew longer and thicker body hair in their transformation, but it looked nothing like wolf fur: it was normal human body hair, just thicker and longer. There were smooth werewolves, although they were extremely rare. Their senses were also heightened, but that happened even when they were in their normal state. Biologist, geneticists and anthropologists all over the world were working to locate the origin of the genetic mutation that caused lycanthropy. Most agreed on considering it a way nature had come up with to protect humans living in harsh, cold territories where they could be easy prey for large animals. Werewolves normally had a higher body temperature and had a naturally buffed physique that made them look like they worked out even if they were the greatest couch potatoes in the world. No one would notice this and that gave them an edge against predators, when the species had evolved. Or partially evolved, as an expert in evolution hypothesized. They looked like normal human beings with superhuman strength and more chances of survival in the case of a zombie apocalypse.

Vampires though, they had it much harder.

After thorough examinations, it was found that vampirism was indeed a new, yet undiscovered form of porphyria, or at least a similar disease. The most accredited theory said it may have spawned from erythropoietic porphyria, the most extreme form of porphyria, and evolved in its own way when it found a tougher than usual group of humans that resisted the disease. It progressed to become an integral part of their genetic code, thus made vampirism a genetic mutation as well, that caused extreme sensitivity to sunlight, extreme anemia that required the consumption of blood, or in modern times, iron supplements and a specific diet, and the trademark sharp canines that allowed them to consume raw meat, a perfect source of iron, without an itch. And, just as werewolves, vampires had acquired some peculiar abilities that made her superior to humans: improved senses, enhanced strength, they required less sleep than the norm and they were naturally more perceiving than usual. Some people thought they were able to read the minds of other people, while in reality, their intuition was just sharper than theirs. Obviously they didn't fly or turn into bats, those parts were just plain bullshit, but the _mind reading_ was nearly true, coupled with the fact that they could charm away nearly everyone they met, they had their perks. Their need to hide and keep out of the sun had turned those affected by vampirism into the perfect investigator, an evolutionary trait that made them able to sneak out of even the direst situation without a scratch, only by talking their way out of it.

Again, biology had an explanation for their condition.

What seemed peculiar was the rate those conditions spread: being DNA-related conditions, one would think normal genetics would apply, but it turned out that the pool of genes that determined both vampirism and lycanthropy were recessive genes. Above all, vampirism developed only if the extremely rare form of porphyria linked to the condition met those specific genes that made it turn into vampire-related porphyria, as vampirism was usually called by scientists. Same went for lycanthropy: the mutation was hereditary, but even if two werewolves had a child there was a chance he or she would be a normal human being. Mixed couples had equal possibilities: a werewolf and a human could have a perfectly healthy human being that would grow, age and get sick at a normal rate, a fully developed werewolf or a human that expressed some characteristics of lycanthropy, like the better working immune system or the exceptional, innate strength, but no other visible characteristics. Immortals could be born by a human couple too: if one parent had the recessive pool of genes in his or her genetic traits that weren't showing for any reason and the other brought on the part that made the DNA mutate into vampiric or lycanthropic DNA, an immortal child could be born. Still rare, but not exceptional.

But scientist were baffled most by their technical immortality. Their cells divided and replicated impossibly fast, according to traditional science, a feat that allowed them to cure themselves faster and survive gruesome wounds that would kill a normal human being instantly. Their immune system killed any foreign intruder in their body and vaccines looked obsolete when compared to their natural immunity. They aged, but the rate was much, much slower: a century old immortal looked more like a twenty-something human. And they kept that appearance for ages. If an immortal looked like a sixty years old human or older, you could bet that his or her age would span across millennia. Those were rare, but some of them still existed and simply pretended to be normal aging humans.

According to some, they were the next step in human evolution. Others considered them the devil spawn. Most of the human population didn't care as long as they didn't kill anyone. Thus, the world changed. So did the law.

Anti-vampiric mobbing was declared illegal and firing a vampire or a werewolf based on their species was punishable by law. Vampire safe-zones were established and lasted from ninety minutes before sundown to one hour after sunrise, which meant it seasonally changed. During that time frame UV radiations were at their lowest and it was safe for them to go outside. Most vampires took night jobs or night shift even before the revolution so very little changed for them anyway, but for those who had demanding jobs, specific windowpanes that filtered all the UV radiation while letting sunlight in were created for both houses and commercial buildings, which made their lives a lot easier than in the past.

Of course, there were issues. Laws were made to be broken, so some companies instated internal rules and policies that wouldn't allow immortals to be hired. Some companies were openly anti-immortals and they weren't silent about it. Others were more inclined to accept them, public administration had to maintain a neutral ground and slowly, by 2002, nearly twenty years after the discovery of their existence, the first few immortals were seen working actively in public places. In 2003, a youn immortal, freshly graduated from NYU, became the first of the newly discovered species in to finish the NYPD academy.

In 2008, Katherine Beckett was promoted to detective and moved from vice to homicide. She was the youngest woman in the police department to be promoted to detective.

She was also the first vampire.


	2. Chapter 1

_Wow. Wow I mean... wow! The response was amazing! You have no idea how happy I was to see all the notifications for the alerts and the favs really, I'm honored. Love you all! As usual, thanks to Alex for the beta reading. This story wouldn't exist without you. *sends love and hugs from Italy*_

_Oh, for anyone who might be worried this will turn into something similar to Twilight, don't worry. I didn't like the books and despised the movies. I'm an Underworld kind of girl. Just wait until I get to re-write Vampire Weekend..._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 1<strong>

Detective Kate Beckett had just got out of bed when her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. Still a little groggy from the long sleep, she picked it up and answered. "Beckett." her voice drowsy and slightly raspy, so she cleared her throat in the attempt to sound more awake, but no matter how she tried, the day had been rough, she hadn't slept well and coming out of the haze was hard that morning.

"Yo, boss. We've got a fresh one. Sun's going down and safety zone starts in twenty minutes, need a ride?"

She yawned a _no,_ dragged and slurred, as Detective Esposito, one of the two other detectives in her team, told her the address of the murder scene. She wrote it down on a piece of scrap paper she found near the fridge and sighed, waiting for the coffee to be ready. "K, I'll get there as soon as the sun goes down. Ryan?"

"On his way here. Looks like one you'll like."

She groaned. "Espo, the day I'll like a homicide, sunlight won't burn vampires. Give me thirty minutes."

She closed the call and let the phone fall unceremoniously on the counter. "Still twenty minutes to safety zone," she mumbled running her fingers through her hair, pushing it away from her eyes. She hated spring and summer; long days, short nights and hours blocked inside buildings with vampire-friendly windows. Long live autumn and winter, with their long nights, days with clouds thick enough she could go out without fearing getting a third degree sunburn in ten minutes or less. Sometimes she envied werewolves. Then she remembered their biology and all the issues that came with their extremely painful transformation and she was happy with being a _bloodsucker_, as people usually called vampires. After all, her main issue was the sun, taking the iron pills to control the anemia had never been a problem.

Then there was the mistrust that humans usually reserved for her, but she had got over that when she was a kid. Immortals were a minority, and they were treated as such. She had been lucky to be accepted the way she was when she applied for police academy and had actually built herself a career in the force. She knew other vampires had been subject of mobbing and had been pushed into resigning from their position or endure the oppression, but it wasn't her case. Her boss at least was very open to immortal beings and while she was the only immortal at the precinct, no one had ever tried to hurt her. They had never made her feel unwelcome and she was grateful for that. Maybe they were just plain scared of her heightened senses and strength, but no one had ever been offensive in her regards.

Anyway, she didn't bother. There were more important things in her life. One of them was solving this case, or at least getting to work on it before the sun rose. She didn't want to get caught out of safety zone like two weeks before so she quickly showered and got dressed, finishing with the makeup just in time for the beginning of vampiric safety zone. Time to get the show on the road.

She parked the car half a block away from the scene and walked to the building. The uniform stationed at the main entrance told her to go to the penthouse. Right outside the elevator there was a small crowd of agents, both uniforms and plain clothes, and CSU investigators with white tyvek overalls on. Esposito, the second in command in her team, waved as soon as he spotted her in the corridor. "Yo Beckett, come here. The scene is down this hallway."

Beckett followed him, with Ryan in two, and he showed them in, the body of a woman laid on a table in the dining room, covered in a mound of rose petals that preserved some of her modesty. A rare, thoughtful act from the murdered. Two brightly colored sunflowers covered her eyes. She knelt beside the table.

"Who are you?" she asked aloud, more to herself than to any other person in the room.

The Hispanic detective filled her in as they walked towards the apartment of the victim. "Allison Tisdale, twenty four, grad student at NYU, part of the social work program."

Kate looked around. "Nice place for a social worker."

"Daddy's money..." mused Ryan, who stood beside Esposito checking the facts he himself had gathered during canvassing as he continued exposing what they knew about their victim.

"Neighbors called to complain for the loud music and when she didn't answer they had the super check up."

Unconsciously, she bit her lower lip, deeply lost in her thoughts. She looked around and noticed how only the four coordinate chairs looked out of place, scattered around the room instead of being lined up at each side of the table, while the rest of the house looked in pristine condition. Not a dust bunny, not a pillow off the couch. Nothing.

"No signs of struggle. He knew her."

Suddenly, a memory sparked; she had seen that scene before, she just needed to remember where.

In that moment, doctor Lanie Parish, the medical examiner that usually followed their cases, arrived with her bag of tools in tow. The took a quick look around and, sassy as always, made one of her trademark sarcastic statements that made people cringe, considering they were in front of a dead body. "Even bought her flowers. Who says romance is dead?"

She stood up. "I do," replied Kate, still looking at the victim. "Every Saturday night."

"Well, lipstick wouldn't hurt."

Beckett shook her head and went back to the victim laying in front of her. "Just sayin'!"

Shaking her head, she took the conversation back to the original topic. "So what did he give her beside the flowers?"

"Two shots to the chest. Small caliber."

The detective started pacing around the table, arms crossed, concentrated on her task. Everyone stood silent, Lanie kept doing her job, taking pictures of the body and slowly working around the rose petals to see if there were more interesting things on the body.

"Does this look familiar to anyone?"

Lanie, Esposito and Ryan shrugged their shoulders. "No but I'm not one for the freaky ones. Just give me an open and closed case so I can make my job and go home and I'm a happy man."

"Yeah well… freaky ones are more interesting. They require more, they reveal more. Look at how the scene was prepared: she's covered, modestly."

"So?" asked Ryan.

"So despite all the effort to make it look like it, you won't find any evidence of sexual abuse." It was a statement. She was sure of it.

"And you get that only by looking at the body?"

She nodded. "Yes and the fact that I've seen this before."

"You… have seen this before? Where?" still Ryan. Now the whole gang was looking at her, as if they had just seen a ghost.

"Roses on the body, sunflowers on the eyes…" she waited for them to reply. "Don't you guys read?"

Still no answer, just shrugged shoulders and raised eyebrows. She huffed in annoyance. Shaking her head, she stood up. "Ryan, locate Richard Castle. We need to talk to him."

Not that far, on the rooftop of the skyscraper where Black Pawn held its offices, the most talked party of the month in New York was taking place; alcohol flowing in rivers, paparazzi flashing their cameras everywhere, women showing their boobs in every corner hoping for him to sign them. Richard Castle had released another book and, as usual, it was more a posh party for brainless gold diggers than a chance to celebrate the fact that he had just written a new book. And of course there was his ex-wife tailing him as he tried to have some fun for the first time in weeks. Spoilsports.

"You just had to kill him, didn't you?" she asked, putting up a fake smile for a photograph with him.

"Are you asking me as my publisher or as my bloodsucking ex-wife?" he grumbled as the photographer walked away from them.

"You're lucky I'm not a real vampire or your blood would be in my Bloody Mary for real." she quipped. "Couldn't you just give him a nice retirement plan? Cripple him? Have him join the damn circus? You killed the golden goose. Rick, are you even listening to me?"

Another grunt. He grabbed a chalice of champagne and turned towards the bar, looking for his mother and daughter. "Yes, I'm listening. Now, can I have some fun and enjoy my party? Derrick wasn't the golden goose, I am!" He was finding it hard to keep up the appearances with Gina, she was being a bitch about it and only because they had just signed the divorce papers. "I've written other best sellers before. I can write a new one."

His ex wife held his glass while he signed an autograph to a _fan_. "Oh my dear Richard Castle… does all this grumpy attitude come from the fact that you haven't written a single line in months and your book was due nine weeks ago?"

"That's absolutely not true," he growled. "And who told you that?" The contents of his chalice were downed in one single, thirsty gulp and it landed on the tray of a waiter passing by.

"I have my sources. Now, do I have to threaten to get your advance back to get you out of your bad case of writer's block?"

"I'm not blocked!" He exclaimed, suddenly defensive.

"You better. If I don't see a manuscript on my desk in the next three weeks, Black Pawn is prepared to take actions against you. Your last advance was pretty consistent, you know."

The sly smile on her face made him find the perfect comeback in less than a moment. "I've spent it divorcing you. You already have it."

With that he left and strode towards the bar. The barman looked up and him waiting for his orders. "Scotch, on the rocks." he asked. There was a small group of champagne flute beside him, he took one and handed it to his daughter, who was sitting at his right. The teenager was scribbling annotations on a notebook, studying.

"No Dad, thank you. I'm still fifteen, remember?"

"You're an old soul." He downed his drink and the one he had grabbed for her.

"Still, but my soul can wait. And you shouldn't drink that much Dad. I know you can't get drunk but they haven't done enough studies on the result of alcohol abuse on werewolves."

Castle snapped, shoving the tumbler and the flute on the counter with more force than required. The crystal of the flute cracked in three points, breaking it. "Alexis!"

The redhead shrugged her shoulders. "What Dad? It's not like someone wants to hear our discussions!"

He looked around and she was right; there was nobody around, close enough to hear them and those who were had something better to think about than eavesdropping his conversation with his daughter. Looking around, he spotted his mother being her usual self while chatting with a distinguished man about her age, who appeared to be quite engrossed in the conversation. He chuckled. Martha Rogers was hard to ignore and could charm her way into every conversation if she spotted a good prey.

"Shouldn't you be having fun like anyone else in the room?" he asked Alexis.

The teenager looked up from her schoolbooks. "Shouldn't you be having fun? It's your party after all."

"Just another boring release party to add to the list. That's why I killed Derrick: I didn't have fun anymore! I knew everything that was going to happen in each scene, writing his character and his adventures had become like writing the grocery list. There were no more surprises, so predictable! Just like the questions at these parties! _How do you do that? Where do you get your ideas? Can you sign my chest?_" he mocked the tragically familiar annoying voice of some of his fans. "It became stale like twenty parties ago. I only someone would come up at me and ask me something new."

Alexis was about to reply when she noticed the fake, strained smile on his face disappear. He twisted his head from side to side, sniffling the air. A waft of cherry-scented air filled his nostrils, capturing his attention. Someone that wasn't in the room before was approaching.

"Mr. Castle?"

He turned around, pen in hand. "Where would you like it?" he said, a knee jerk reaction her had developed after twenty years of release parties and signing sessions, before the woman with the scented conditioner raised her hand and flashed her police badge.

"Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD, we need to talk about a murder that took place tonight."

Richard Castle, self-proclaimed wordsmith, was at A loss for words. The woman in front of him was so beautiful he was blocked. He couldn't speak, he could barely breathe. He jumped when Alexis sneaked her arms around his shoulders and took the pen from his hand. "That's new."

It had been a long time since Richard Castle had sat in an interrogation room. And it had never been on the suspect's side.

He didn't exactly know what was going on, only that someone had died and the PD wanted to question him for some reason. Whatever it was, he had an alibi for that night anyway, so he was calm and composed, a tad bored and definitely intrigued by this Detective Beckett. Beautiful woman though a silent one. During the short trip from Black Pawn to the 12th Precinct, or at least he thought it was the 12th, they hadn't spoken much. He had tried to gather more information about this murder, but her lips were sealed shut about it.

So he waited for any of the detectives he had seen as she had walked him through the homicide division. And while he waited, he tried to conjure every possible motive the police might have to drag him away from his launch party and put him in that room alone. But above all, he was kind of annoyed by the fact that they had placed him there all alone for the past forty five minutes.

He wondered what they were doing on the other side of the see-through mirror so he remained silent and listened closely to his surroundings. A human couldn't probably hear much outside those walls, but an immortal like him could listen way beyond. He could hear them talking clearly, deciding what to do with him. He could hear three male voices in the adjacent room, one he had heard talking to Detective Beckett when they had arrived, but the other two were completely unknown to him. He understood though, by the tone of their discussion, that one of the voices belonged to a superior officer, probably the captain. Beyond that, muffled by the walls and the distance, he could hear the people in the bullpen bustling around, doing their jobs and the background traffic noise he always heard everywhere. He was so used to it he had to concentrate to actually listen to it.

Beyond the fine ears, his sense of smell was heightened too. On the way there he had picked up many different scents, from the cheap motor oil that reigned in the parking lot to the strong odor of antibacterial detergent used to clean the room he was sitting in. Not to mention the acrid smell of stale sweat, urine and God knows what else that came from the detention room on the first floor. They hadn't gone near there, but the horrid smell had washed over him like a wave. He had to suppress his gag reflex to not throw up in the middle of the hall.

So he waited, patiently, watching as the battery of his phone dropped while he played Tetris on his phone to kill time, until he heard the sound of high heels approaching the door. He quickly closed his phone and pushed it back in his pocket, then laid his hands on the table. The door opened and Detective Beckett appeared in the frame, a thick file in hand.

"Mister Castle… quite a rap sheet for a best-selling author: disorderly conduct resisting arrest… it says you stole a police horse and that you were naked at the time."

"Actually, I only borrowed it and for the nakedness part… it was spring." Lamest joke ever, but it helped dissolve a little bit of tension. There was something in his woman that kept him on his toes, and he wasn't sure if liked it or hated it.

"And every time the charges have been dropped," she stated, sitting down in front of him.

He shrugged his shoulders. "What can I say, the mayor's a fan but if it makes you feel better, I'd be happy to let you spank me."

The roll of her eyes spoke volumes about what she thought about him being a jerk. Her words just confirmed it.

"Mister Castle, this whole bad boy charm thing… it only works with bimbettes and celebutantes. Me, I work for a living so this gives you two options: you're either the person that makes my life easier or the person that makes my life harder and believe me, you don't want to be the latter."

"'K". was his only reply.

Detective Beckett took a photo out of the folder, the picture of a woman. "Allison Tisdale, daughter of Jonathan Tisdale."

"She's cute," he added.

Kate hardly suppressed a groan. "She's dead. Have you met her? Book launch party, signing session, charity event… anywhere."

That was a weird question. "I might have but… neither her name or her face ring a bell, I don't think so. I'm usually good with faces and unfortunately she doesn't remind me of anything."

One down, another one to go. "What about this guy? Marvin Fisk small claims lawyer."

He tried to bite his tongue but couldn't stop himself, really. "Usually my claims tend to be on the large side…"

Another eye-roll and this time it came with a soft yet steady groan of annoyance. The sudden instinct to bite his neck off surged in her veins and she had to fight it back as she ran the tip of her tongue on her pointy canine teeth that apparently ached to pierce his skin. She hated that feeling, that instinct to bite that came with her _condition_, that hunger for blood she had ever since she could remember, and how it popped up at random moments of her life, most of all when she was in a foul mood. Like in that very moment.

"What's this got to do with me?" he asked.

"Fisk was found murdered two weeks ago in his office. We didn't put it all together until we found Allison Tisdale crime scene earlier this evening." She put a photo of the scene in front of him.

From his jolt and slightly horrified grin that twisted his face for the briefest moment she knew he wasn't the killer. She had already checked his alibi with his daughter, mother and publisher, that detail was just for personal satisfaction.

"That's _Flowers For Your Grave_!" he exclaimed.

She placed another photo from a murder that had happened about a week earlier. "And this how we found Fisk, straight out of _Hell Hath No Fury_. You seem to have a deranged fan."

Castle took the pictures in his hands and looked at them, both fascinated and disgusted. "You don't look deranged to me," he quipped, never looking away from the pictures.

Beckett frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"_Flowers For Your Grave_ and _Hell Hath No Fury_? Those are… only hard core Castle groupies have read them, they're not my best books. You must have read them a couple of times to make the connections between the murders and my books."

She decided to ignore his tasteless joke and go on, although she felt the sudden need to hurt him. "Do any of your groupies write you fan mail?" He nodded. "Disturbing letters?"

"All my fanmail is disturbing, it's an occupational hazard. I can have it delivered here in a couple of hours, if you can wait."

"Good, because sometimes in cases like this we find out that the murderer tried to reach out to the…"

"...subject of his obsession," he completed her sentence. "I've got quite an extensive knowledge of psychopathic behavior. Another occupational hazard. Do you think I could keep the pictures?"

Again, the instinct to bite rose. Instead of pushing her fangs in his neck though, she bit down her tongue, drawing a small drop of blood that managed to escape the tiny wound before it closed by itself in the span of a second. The coppery scent didn't escape his extremely sensitive sense of smell.

"Why?" she asked, trying to sound as calm as possible.

"You know, I have a little poker ring and we're going to meet tomorrow night. It's mostly composed of mystery writers like Cannel, Patterson… this is like the Holy Grail for mystery writers like us! It's a badge of honor!"

That was the last straw. She could bear his disrespectful manners towards her, but towards the victims? No way. She stood up, fast enough to make him jump a little bit in his seat and banged her hands on the table before leaning forwards towards him. She saw him holding his breath and move back a little bit; finally a sign of worry for his situation, his whole cocky attitude trembled a little bit.

"People are dead Mister Castle. If you're going to joke about it, you can get the hell out of here now, since you're not being helpful."

He remained silent for a moment, before smiling slyly. "I didn't ask for the bodies, just the pictures."

The look on his face made her want to slap him. "I think we're done here."


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

As promised, the fanmail arrived two hours and fifteen minutes later, with a promptly thrown excuse from the pony express because he got caught in traffic. The fifteen boxes full of unopened mail came in the precinct creating a huge pile that would have taken her at least the whole night and part of the day to get through, looking for anything that even remotely reminded of the two homicides she was investigating on.

The detective silently thanked the NYPD policy that had made every window of every precinct vampire-proof.

She had been down at the morgue to hear some preliminary result from Lanie when she found the lobby of homicide filled with the plastic boxes and both Ryan and Esposito moving some of them into the break room, where they wouldn't have disturbed anyone.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Your writer there had all his fanmail sent here." Replied a uniform that was currently guarding a pretty beaten up suspect as he waited for his interrogation, while he pointed to the opened door of the captain's office.

She looked towards that direction and saw Richard Castle, this time out of the tailored suit and into a pair of worn jeans and a quite normal blue shirt, talking to Captain Montgomery. They seemed pretty close, they were both laughing and joking as if they had known each other for a long time. She swallowed a growl and approached the two men. Montgomery must have seen her because he turned and waved at her, gesturing to come closer.

"Ah Detective, nice to see you. Did Dr. Parish have anything for you?"

Kate shook her head. "Nothing conclusive, but the preliminary exams excluded sexual assault or anything else except for the two bullets. She already extracted them and sent them to ballistics to have them checked."

"Good. I dare to say you already met Mr. Castle here."

She nodded. "Yes, I had some time with him questioning about his books and his fans. I imagine all those boxes are your fanmail." she stated, looking at the writer.

"The unopened. I asked my PR to look through the opened mail but she's not in the city. She'll look through it as soon as she gets here."

Montgomery patted his shoulder. "Now Detective, I know you prefer to work alone but Castle has offered his collaboration to help you sort all that mail out."

She couldn't help but gasp at the thought. Working with that jerk? No way.

"Are you sure Sir?" she asked. "He's not a police officer I don't think…" She was trying to find a way out of it, she wouldn't work with Castle for all the gold in the world.

"He knows more than most of our recruits on how to deal with possible evidences. Don't worry, you'll be fine. I've asked the others to leave Interrogation Room 2 free for you, whenever you want to start, just walk in there."

With that, the captain pushed them out of his office and closed the door behind himself.

Beckett looked around, slightly nervous. "So… you want to help?"

Castle nodded. "It's the least I can do. This psycho is killing people inspired by my books, I can't really sit through it doing nothing."

Genuinely surprised by his confession, she walked towards the set up room with the writer at her heels. "That's surprisingly touching."

"I would have stayed even after we were done with the interrogation but I wanted to check on my daughter and my mother before they went to bed. Alexis has an important test next week and she's pretty engrossed with her books. I don't get much time with her lately so…"

They sat at the table, a box already opened on it. "Your daughter is that girl that sat behind you at the party?" she asked, handing him a pair of nitril gloves so they wouldn't leave fingerprints.

He nodded, snapping the gloves on. He took a handful of letters and started opening the first one. "Yes, that's her. I don't think you met my mother, she was busy talking to some guy when we left. Right, this one is a normal fangirl asking for a signed copy. Where do we put the garbage?"

They spent two hours working in silence, until Beckett noticed that Castle had slowed down, looking more carefully at each letter and stealing glances at her while she worked. At first she didn't mind, after all he was helping her and they had already gone through six boxes together. Doing it alone, it would have taken her more time than what she had. There was a killer at large and no way in hell she'd let him live free to kill again if she could avoid it.

But as his sideways looks came more often, she became more nervous, to the point she couldn't take it anymore. "Could you stop staring at me, please?"

Castle dropped the letter in his hands and stared at her, this time without a screen to hide behind. "Stop what?"

"You're staring at me like I'm some kind of guinea pig," She stated, quite angry. "Would you please stop doing that or at least tell me why?"

"I'm curious about your story," he replied. Simple as that. "There's something about you that intrigues me. Women, beautiful women usually become lawyers, not cops. You have no accent, that means Manhattan and that means money. You had options, lots of more socially acceptable options and yet you're here." He looked straight into her eyes and she felt that sense of unease increasing. "Something happened. Something happened but not to you. You're wounded but not that wounded. It was someone close to you, a friend or a parent. You're here to avenge that person."

As he spoke, she felt as if the good ol' wooden stake of lore was pushed through her heart, shattering it before her damn _condition_ mended it in a second or two. She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat and tried to man up enough so her voice wouldn't tremble as she spoke. "Don't think you know me," she spat out. If he only knew the truth… She averted her eyes from him, then opened another envelope.

That was it. The stylized drawings of the two crime scenes and aimless jibbersh words filled the three notebook pages she found inside the packet. There was no sender address written but they quickly sent it away to process for fingerprints.

As they waited, dispatch called in another murder. Esposito and Ryan checked their watches but Beckett silently nodded. They still had time. It wasn't that late and she was sure she could come back to the precinct in time. End of safety zone was still three hours away and the crime scene wasn't that far. She had time.

With Castle in tow, they went and quickly realized the scene was inspired by _Death Of A Prom Queen_, one of his minor novels, just like the previous two. They were in the middle of canvassing for that homicide when a positive match came from a clear fingerprint CSU had found on the letter. Less than two hours later they had a culprit in detention. Turned out he was one of Allison Tisdale's cases. Kyle Cabbot suffered from pervasive developmental disorder, which often caused a person to get fixated on someone or something, in his case Castle's books.

Everything seemed to fit the forensic traces left on the bodies and the ritualistic way the murders had been carried out so they thought everything was fine, that they had closed it and they could go home.

Yet, Castle had some afterthoughts. If Kyle was indeed the murderer, all the discrepancies between his novels and the murder scenes were weird. Some things didn't match, some very important details that he hadn't left to the reader's imagination when he had wrote the novels, they were clearly printed on paper and a _fan_ like Kyle would have never forget about them, his condition wouldn't allow him to forget them.

There was something wrong, and that sense of wrongness nagged at him as he tried to write, back in the coziness of his home, the next day. He stared at the cursor on the screen of his laptop, the first few lines of something typed in the text editor but nothing could take his attention away from the fact that something was wrong. So he devised a plan to get his hands on the file. And next evening he was there at the precinct, a box in his hands, waiting for Detective Beckett.

His gut feeling about her nature got stronger when he noticed that she had arrived at her desk twenty minutes after the beginning of the vampire safe zone.

She found him leaning against his desk, surprised by his showing up like that after they had closed the case. Behind him, on her desk, sat the files and all the paperwork that would have occupied her night. "Mr. Castle, what are you doing here?" she asked, a genuine amazed tone coloring her voice.

"Well, I came here to thank you for the opportunity you gave me yesterday. And since you're a fan, here's an advanced copy of my last book." He handed her the white box he held. "You won't have to wait for the official release date."

Beckett opened the box and found the new book from her favorite author (because she had to admit that although he was a jackass he was indeed her favorite author) she gasped. "Wow…" she whispered. "Thank you."

"You don't even have to ask. I hope I'll see you again, sometimes."

"I doubt it. You and I are worlds apart, but I'll enjoy the book. Thank you."

Without warning, he leaned closer to her and kissed the corner of her mouth. A spark of disbelief ran through her body and she was stuck there, as if her shoes had been glued to the floor.

When he moved back, she could only nod as he passed beside her and walked to the elevator. She turned around and smiled, thinking that maybe beneath that absolutely idiotic behavior there was a good person. Maybe a bit of a jerk, but a good person. She watched him walk away and out of her life - thank God - forever.

Taking a deep breath, she sat at her desk and placed the book in one of the drawers before placing her gun there too, when she noticed that the pile of files that had made a small tower of paperwork related to the Tisdale case were missing. She looked around to Esposito's and Ryan's desks, looking for the missing folders, but nothing.

She rushed to the elevator, but it had already gone down to the lobby. Castle was probably on a taxi already headed wherever he wanted to go.

"Damn it," she cursed. In long, angry strides, she walked back to the desk and made a phone call. "This is Detective Kate Beckett, 12th Precinct Homicide, I need an APB for Richard Castle. Yes, the writer. He stole police evidences from custody. Yes. Thank you."

The scorned detective sat back on her chair and huffed an irritated sigh. The APB would allow them to find him, at some point, but only if he remained outside. By the time the bulletin would have reached the whole department he would have probably found some place safe to stay. While waiting for any sightings for the novelist, she tried the usual cop work: she sat down and made more phone calls and managed to get hold of his house phone number. That was one hour after he had disappeared in the hallway. His mother picked up, and when asked why the police was looking again for her son, Beckett managed to dodge the question, but at least his mother, Martha, had given her some clues to find Castle. The New York Public Library.

"Richard Castle!" She bellowed, not caring for the rule of silence. "You're under arrest for obstruction of justice!"

He raised his head from the photos laid in front of him, smiling. He had heard her walking into the building when she was still on the ground floor. He knew he didn't have much time to look at the file he had sneaked out of the precinct before she would find him. That woman was a hunter, she had something that made her a skilled hunter in the way she did her job. Other people would need more time to get a hold of a suspect, she only needed one hour.

And he suspected his mother had something to do with it.

She cuffed him, not without a tad of mirth in the way she read him his Miranda Rights, then pushed him downstairs and into her car, the file now back in her hands resting on the passenger seat.

"You got the wrong guy," said Castle when she started the car.

The detective shook her head. "What makes you think that?"

"The details," he replied, cryptically.

"You mean the details he got wrong? Like the kind of rose and the dress of Kendra Pitney? Kyle Cabbot has a mental disability, Castle. He washes dishes in a diner to pay the rent, do you really think he could afford every minor detail to re-enact your novels?"

"He has PDD, he would be extremely meticulous about details. He wouldn't miss two major details like those. Not the dress at least. Maybe the roses, they can't be found this time of the year, but the dress… also, first a random man, then his social worker then another random person? I'm sorry but it makes no sense, even if our guy has a mental disability."

They remained silent for a while at a red light, it gave her enough time to think about what he had said and feel her innate perceptivity tingle like a sixth sense to the point she decided to listen to him., and Castle was amazed to see her turn in the opposite direction. "Hey, where are we going?"

She gestured him to shut up while she pulled up her phone and composed a number. "Good evening, this is Detective Kate Beckett, I'm in charge of Mr. Tisdale's daughter murder. Is he still in his office, I'd like to speak to him. Yes. Now? Thank you very much, we'll be here in ten minutes."

"Where are we going?" he asked again, leaning closer to her seat. Not exactly easy, with his hands cuffed behind his back.

"You and your doubts. You started making sense. We're going to meet Allison's father."

It wasn't only him. He was in big part responsible for her change of heart, but after all she had already decided to look a little bit into her family because the victim was so high profile she needed to double check. With a disabled culprit, the lawyer would of course try the road of mental instability and look for every possible quibble in the way the investigation had been brought on. If she didn't check on the family, most of all such a wealthy and important family, she'd be crucified during the trial.

During the brief visit, she noticed how Castle was more than proper while she questioned Jonathan Tisdale, just listening and looking around, completely different from the poking and prodding he had been doing with her ever since the first interrogation. He spoke only when they got out and sat back in the car, headed back to the precinct.

"Did you notice it?"

Beckett started the engine. "What?"

"He's sick. There were pictures of him in his office and he was bigger. But he didn't look like workout thin, he looked more sick thin, and he had a hair piece. Noticed how he kept touching his hair? It's new to him, he's not used to it," also, the faint stench of hospital still hung on his skin, but that wasn't a detail he wanted to share.

"So you think he's sick? Like cancer or something like that?"

He nodded. "Yes. I've never been around cancer patients but I've done some book research throughout the years to know a couple of things. He's dying."

"And if he's dying maybe his son wanted to get his hands on the whole inheritance. He may have used Kyle's disability and fixation on your books to frame him."

"That's what I thought. Problem is, he didn't get the details right. I bet that if you go and ask him he'll mess up something else."

She glanced at her watch. He couldn't help but notice that it wasn't the type of watch you see hanging at the wrist of a woman, it was instead an old Omega Speedmaster designed for men, with a thick leather band and a black quadrant. Nothing flashy, definitely classy, the kind of watch you see at the wrist of a pricey lawyer. He was sure there was a story behind that watch, probably related to the parent she lost. Her father, apparently.

"It's too late, Tisdale said his son works in constructions, he won't be in his office now."

"So what?"

"So I'll send Esposito and Ryan to question him. I'll do a background check on him tonight."

There was a moment of silence between them, filled only by the low rumble of the car and the usual bustle outside the windows.

"Come on, I'll take you home." she stated, filling the thick stillness of the car.

"May I come tomorrow night? If this… Harrison Tisdale is really the murderer, I'd like to know."

"Only if you promise to behave. No more stealing evidence and files."

"Scout's honor."

She stopped at another red light.

"And if we're going to arrest him, you stay in the car. Alright?"

He sighed. "I told you. Scout's honor!"

Next afternoon, the three detectives and the writer who had insisted on coming at the precinct earlier that morning, were all rounded up at her desk, discussing what Esposito and Ryan had learned while eating Chinese takeout as late lunch.

"So we go and ask him where he was at the time of each murder and there he is, ready with a reply. He didn't check, he didn't ask the date… he picks his passport with three neat stamps on it. Damn Beckett you were right. He would mess up again."

She looked at Castle, knowing that those were his words, but he didn't say anything. He just shrugged his shoulders. "Fake stamps?"

"Oh no," interjected Ryan. "Very real. We double-checked. He was out of the States when the victims were killed."

Beckett shook her head. "Well, with his resources, although his business isn't exactly navigating in calm waters, getting a fake passport wouldn't be that hard. We just need to find it. Or them, because he could always have more fake IDs, you never know."

"So let me get this straight; you did a background check yesterday night and found out that Harrison Tisdale needs money fast but apparently daddy won't just sign the check. And you also found out that Tisdale Senior is indeed sick and that he's undergoing chemotherapy." Beckett nodded. "And now you're ready to ask for a search warrant."

"If we find a judge willing to sign it. I mean, it's a high profile case, not many judges want their signature on the search warrant for Jonathan Tisdale's son, he's highly respected and influential with politics, you know," stated Beckett, looking at the already printed request she had compiled as soon as they had learned about the major slip in Harrison's tale.

Castle shook his head and pulled his phone out, punching a speed dial button. "No need to worry about it." He waited a little bit before a woman picked up. "Hi Carla, it's Rick. Is he still in? That would be great, thank you. Bob, hey there man how are you?" he shouted, clearly happy to be talking to his friend.

"Is he talking to the major?" asked Ryan.

Beckett's face showed all her perplexity. "Apparently…"

One minute later Castle was sitting in her car and she was driving at neck breaking speed towards the DA offices to block the last judge still at work and have them sign the warrant, while Ryan and Espo gathered some uniforms for the support team. They had been in the police force long enough to know that sometimes, even if it was only a search warrant and not an arrest, people freaked out and did stupid things like shooting at the police or running away.

They always ran prepared.

So prepared, they also had a special car with UV screened windows that Kate could use even in broad daylight. Short exposure wouldn't hurt her, less than ten minutes were more than enough to get out of the car, into the building, perform the search while staying the shade and then go back to the car. Her super-boosted healing abilities would have healed all the damage done to her skin by the sunlight and no one would have noticed anything. More than ten minutes or direct exposure to sunlight though… while it wasn't lethal, it was extremely painful. She didn't exactly want to recall those days when she tried to force herself out in the sun to live like a normal teenager, with no avail. The physical pain was still branded in her memory, and not in a good way.

"Remember what you told me yesterday?" she asked Castle before she got out of the car.

"What? About staying in the car?"

Beckett nodded. "Yes. We don't know what will happen, we have a support team but I don't want you to get hurt. OK?"

"Scout's honor, alright. I'll stay in the car."

"Good." The detective then stormed out of the vehicle and inside the building. The confident stride made her look sexy as hell while she briskly walked in the lobby of the commercial building.

Once the support team was deployed behind her, she banged on Harrison's office door. "Harrison Tisdale, open up, we have a search warrant."

She could hear some noises inside, a machine running and stuff being thrown on the floor, maybe by someone running away. When she heard a glass breaking and the loud clank of someone falling on the emergency stairs, she moved back from the door and Esposito kicked the door open. As they stormed in they saw a shadow running down the metallic stairs.

Without caring for her health, Beckett rushed out the window and looked down. As she did, she pointed her gun towards the fleeting suspect, who had a plastic bag in one hand and a large caliber gun in the other while he clumsily rushed down to the street level.

"Beckett!" She heard Castle scream. He had come out of the car, but was standing beside it. "Beckett he's running!"

"I know!" she shouted back. "Harrison Tisdale stop! You're under arrest!"

He didn't stop at all, rather he ran faster. As she followed him, already feeling the unpleasant tingle of the sunlight on her skin, she also noticed that Castle was running after Tisdale. "Damn," she whispered, moving a bit faster, but still in a human range of speed. The urge to just jump down two stories, knowing that it wouldn't hurt her more than the sun, was threatening to overcome her rational thinking. She usually followed procedure to the last line But the urge to just jump over Tisdale and arrest him before the first sunburn would appear on her skin was definitely appealing.

Damn, Castle was fast. For such a big man he was really, really fast. She had just reached the entrance of the alley where Harrison had run trying to find safety and she saw Castle tackling the guy like a professional linebacker and taking him down to the ground. Tisdale tried to fire, but he had left the safety on. Good for them.

The writer-turned-cop for a day and the suspect were scuffling on the dirty pavement when she reached them, handcuffs in one hand and gun trained on the suspect. Castle managed to disarm him with brute force and topple him so Tisdale was laying prone on the ground. He held his hands behind his back so Beckett could cuff him.

"Tell me you saw that!" He jumped on his feet, thrilled like a kid on Christmas day. He was really excited by the whole thing.

"Oh yeah, I saw that," she replied. One of the uniforms of the tactic support arrived in that moment and took custody of Tisdale, reading him his rights. When her hands were free and her gun holstered, she shoved him by the shoulders, pushing him against the wall of the building. "What the hell were you thinking? You could have been killed!"

"The safety was always on!"

"I know that but… damn!" An intrusive ray of sunlight hit her squarely in the eyes, a particularly tender spot for people with her condition. She retreated from the lit area of the alley, shielding her eyes. She couldn't hold back a pain-filled moan as the light still burned her over-sensitive nerve endings.

Then she felt something being placed over her head and shoulders, shading her from the bright afternoon light. She opened an hurting eye and saw half of Castle as he protected her from the sun with his jacket.

"You suffer from vampire-related porphyria, don't you?"

For a moment, Beckett whimpered still in pain but also from the surprise, before she regained her composure. At least he hadn't said _you're a vampire_. She hated that name.

"That obvious?"

"Yeah well, I had my suspects even before. You were only out during the safety time zone so… it was just a matter of doing the math and although I chose a more artistic career, I can still add two and two," he explained, calmly. No one had ever had that reaction upon learning the truth about her… _nature. _People either freaked out or were morbidly obsessed with it, showering her with pointless questions and stupid remarks. When they didn't decide to turn to being plainly offensive.

She chuckled and stood up straight. "You know a whole lot about vampires," she asked. The pain had subsided, it wasn't as sharp as a moment earlier.

"I've done a lot of research in the past few years. When the whole thing was revealed, I was a kid and found it fascinating," he replied. "I've kept up to date with the newest scientific discoveries about both conditions. You know, there's also lycanthropy."

"Oh, I know all too well," she took the jacket from him and started walking towards her car. "Come on, let's get somewhere a little less sunny."

They silently walked out of the alley, some meters away from the small group that surrounded Tisdale as they pushed him in one of the cars.

"Why don't we go out?" asked Castle, out of the blue. "There's a nice cafe not too far from here, it makes delicious coffee and their pastries are awesome. We could debrief each other."

Lamest pick up line ever, and they both knew it. He glanced at her quick enough to catch her biting her lower lip, a gesture he had seen her doing more than once, both when stressed and when being plainly flirty. Like in that moment.

"So I can be one of your conquests?"

"Or I could be yours." Castle opened the door of her car; the one with screened windshields and let her sit down.

"I don't think we could work."

Beckett gave him his jacket back. "Too bad." He said. "It could have been great."

Another lip bite, this time, it was just flirty and not stressed. It turned him on like hell. "You have no idea."

Then she closed the door and started the engine, making it growl like a feral animal, then rushed away to follow her culprit to processing.

But the writer had another ace up his sleeve. And a surge to write that couldn't compare to anything he ever had. He pushed the Mayor's speed dial button again and waited. It was a short conversation, but long enough to obtain what he wanted.

Four hours and half later, he was back at the precinct, hiding behind the door as Detective Beckett tried to talk herself out of his nicely devised plan that would have allowed him to shadow her.

He couldn't help but smile at the thought. Shadowing a person that lived in the shadows. Gina thought he was blocked, that he couldn't write anymore?

Detective Kate Beckett had just unblocked the words from his brain. And two chapters of his new book had already been sent. A new character had been created and a new novel was on the way. He just needed to do some research.

Her shocked expression when she turned towards him was more than amusing. He delivered his trademark smoldering eyebrow raise but couldn't help but feel a shiver running down his spine, an inexplicable sensation of cold, as if she had thrown a bucket of iced water down his back with one killer glare, a fierce look that made him falter, although he tried to look sharp and confident despite of the sudden chill. There was something more in that woman that intrigued him.

That woman was a mystery and he was going to solve it.


	4. Chapter 3

_Sorry, forgot to post yesterday, went to see Peter Gabriel live (again, third time in one year, those who read my Star Wars works know that I absolutely adore Peter Gabriel as a musician) and updating kinda slipped from my mind. Please forgive me. _

_Also, thanks for all the follows, the favs and the reviews, it's overwhelming to say the least. I love you all guys and gals!_

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3<strong>

A couple of days later Castle was back at the precinct to sign the pile of documents and waivers the police department required to allow him to follow her.

She had spent those last few days of freedom brooding at her desk, fillling paperwork. Ryan and Esposito, hiding behind their computer monitors, were looking forward to see a control freak like her dealing with an oddball like Castle. She hated being forced into things. Seeing her being followed by a _nine year old on a sugar rush_, as she had called him, would be better than Shark Week. They were sure of it.

So there she was in the corner of the conference room, staring at the writer as he signed the papers he was handed, sporting a death glare that would have scared away everyone in his situation, and yet he remained. He signed every single sheet, one by one, completely ignoring her hostility towards him and this whole, freaky idea of having a civilian following her around town solving crimes.

She felt like being thrown in an episode of Murder She Wrote, with reversed roles. To be completely honest she'd prefer being shadowed by Angela Lansbury and her British humor.

"Is he finished signing stuff so I can shoot him?"

She heard the softest chuckles coming from him, so low she was sure no one else had heard it. It was an amusement-filled chuckle, as if he was actually making that sound willingly so low that only she could pick it up. It was that kind of smartass behavior that made her long to sink her teeth into his neck and be done with this idiotic situation. The only thing that stopped her was the fact that killing him would cause him stop writing his novels.

Luckily for her, Esposito came to her rescue when he called her with a fresh body drop. Quickly, she moved to follow her team mate out of the precinct to the crime scene, only to be stopped by the novelist.

"Wait, we've got a body?" he asked, lifting his eyes from the dotted line he was signing.

"No, I've got a body, you have paperwork!" she exclaimed, closing the door behind her.

Still a few more minutes of freedom.

Right from the crime scene, things were weird. Sarah Manning, a full-time nanny for an upper-class family, had been murdered and her body had been hidden in one of the laundry room dryers. The woman that had found the body, an elderly lady only interested in doing her laundry, was still sitting in a corner of the hall, tended to by paramedics that were keeping her on oxygen. The shock could have killed her, that was for sure.

She scanned the room as she entered; nothing looked out of place, there was blood, although a small amount - she had been able to pick up the scent from outside the building, thanks to her enhanced senses. No signs of struggle or of a fight except for a bleach bottle out of place. A normal laundry room, like thousands in the city. It reminded her of the laundry room in her own building, with that mix of mold, detergent, and overheated machinery smell so intense that sometimes it made her gag. Nothing strange about the room, except for the dead body in the dryer.

"Hey Ryan, what do we have?"

"Who knows. Old lady comes down to move her clothes to the dryer and finds the girl. Nearly had a heart attack."

She nodded, looking inside. The victim was a young girl, early twenties at most. "Did she live here?"

"No, she only worked here, for the Petersons' on the 12th floor. They've been alerted, you can go upstairs when you want to interrogate them."

"Thank you Ryan. Who's the ME in charge?"

"Lanie," answered Esposito. "She's coming up, there's a bit of a traffic jam on the way here."

"Right. I'll call her later. You two can deal with canvassing while I go and question the Petersons?" she asked, already moving towards the door.

"No problem. Where's the writer?"

The detective shook her head. "Still at the precinct signing his Last Will and Testament, if I'm lucky."

No, she wasn't so lucky. The wanna-be-cop writer was waiting for her with that smug smile on his face that truly annoyed her to hell.

"Finished paperwork?" she asked, walking towards the elevator.

"When the Captain told me you had Nanny McDead I started signing at the speed of light. The lawyer couldn't believe a man could write so fast. So? Thoughts?"

"A woman died. For now that's all we know. I'm going to question the family she worked for now."

"That's so cool…" he said, gloating like a kid in a candy store.

"Castle, listen very carefully. There's a dead person, a person that had a family and was probably close to her employers, not to mention the kid. Please, don't be so happy about it," she ordered him as she pushed the button and the elevator doors closed.

Immediately, Castle straightened his face and became extremely serious. "Alright."

The questioning went fine, quick and painless, a normal witness questioning like many others. They had Sarah's bag, her address and the name of her ex-boyfriend. It wasn't nine o'clock yet when they got back to the precinct and although Lanie was taking her time with the autopsy, they had enough time to check her phone list through her service provider, and found several short calls from Brent Johnson. They all looked like short voicemail messages. Given the type of attack and the quick attempt to hide the body, Beckett and her team suspected a crime of passion, probably triggered by jealousy.

Who else fit the role of the jealous killer better than an ex-boyfriend?

After all, the Petersons had said the couple had broken up about a month before, although they weren't specific about the circumstances of the break up, but checking on him wouldn't hurt. They had to wait until next day though. It was too late to call him there for questioning, although they had enough reasons to do so, they weren't enough to call him in at that hour.

"You can go home Castle, nothing's going to happen tonight," she told him when she realized he had resorted to tinkering with stationery he had found on her desk to keep himself entertained.

"What if the warrants for his phone records and her voicemail come in when I'm home?"

"It'll take at least six hours. Go home to your family, I'm sure your daughter will appreciate it."

He shrugged his head. "Nah, she's fine. She actually likes when I'm not at home. Less noise around the loft."

"Then what are you going to do? Build a castle out of paperclips?"

"Why not? Esposito and Ryan went home, you'd be here all alone. What if I just want to keep you company?"

She shook her head and kept typing the request for the warrant. "Thanks, but you can go, really. I'm fine here, with the night shift."

He didn't reply, at least not immediately. He stared at her for a while, lost in his thoughts. She kept doing her job, then sent the warrant request via email to be evaluated, but now it was just a waiting game with the ADA office. "Now we wait."

"It's not the ex-boyfriend."

Beckett nodded. "I know," she revealed. "He wouldn't have taken the phone, it would have lead straight to him. I've dealt with stupid murderers but never this stupid. He might know something, that's why I'm calling him in. If I want him to tell me something though, I need some leverage."

"And an ex-boyfriend doesn't call sixteen times in a week only to hear how she's doing. Right… what do you think?"

"At this point, I don't think. I can guess, but I don't like to throw wild theories around, not when the ME still has to call in for preliminary results."

Right on cue, her direct phone line rang. Quickly, she picked up. "Beckett. Right. We'll be right there," she closed the call. "Come, Lanie's done with the autopsy."

"That was fast!" Castle's voice echoed in the autopsy room, while he donned the protective gear.

"That's because I'm not exactly done. I still have to proceed with the internal organ exams but I was able to determine the cause of death with x-rays," replied the ME.

Sarah Manning's body was still on her table, a light blue sheet draped over her from the neck down to cover the Y incision that Lanie had just performed before she buzzed them in from upstairs.

It was the first time Castle had seen a dead body. An opened dead body. He wasn't ready for the dank, sickly sweet and coppery smell that hung in the room. Like Beckett, he had a very hard time trying to hold back the urge to rush out of morgue and breathe the fresh, polluted air of the city night. And maybe throw up their dinner too.

To say it was disgusting was an understatement. He was sure Beckett was used to it, after so many years in the force, but for him? Nightmare fuel. Contrary to popular belief, werewolves weren't morbidly attracted to blood. Most of them hated the smell of it, and if it was old and on its way to decomposition it made them sick. He crossed his arms around his chest to hide the deep breaths he was taking and not give away his distress, but deep down he was fighting really hard to control his gag reflex. He let the detective do the talking, because he could barely control his breathing.

"So? Cause of death?" asked Beckett.

"Subdural bleeding. Someone pushed her and she fell or she was hit with something really heavy that knocked her unconscious. The killer must have thought she was dead and hid her in the dryer. The heat caused the bleeding to speed up and she died. With medical help she'd probably still be alive."

Castle saw Beckett shut her eyes tightly for a moment. He was sure that if she had the chance to voice her thoughts, a long line of curses would come out. Knowing that the victim could saved must be tough.

"Anything else?"

The ME nodded. "There were no signs of struggle except for the bruising here," she pointed at the victim's temple. "And she had sex not long before she died, but the heat makes it hard to pinpoint when."

"Sex?" asked the detective.

"I'll explain how it works later," stated Castle, behind her. Beckett turned around and if looks could kill, she'd need a license for that face. He took a mental note of that expression for future reference.

"Yes, she had sex. Unfortunately, there were no DNA traces, meaning the guy wore a condom."

"Traces of rape?"

"Hard to say. There were no vaginal lacerations or bruises, and as I said there were no signs of struggle."

"She knew the guy. Alright. Thank you Lanie, we'll wait for the final results."

When they went back to the bullpen, everything was silent, unmoving. Nightshift was usually extremely calm except for special nights, like full moon or national holidays and with less than ten detectives in place, there wasn't really much to do.

They sat at her desk, silent and she checked her emails. Nothing had come from the ADA offices. It was too late, all the judges were already off duty. It was only them, left to wait.

"Should we call it a night and go home?" he asked.

Beckett shrugged her shoulders. "No, I don't want to waste my timeframe of freedom idling at my place until the sun goes down again. Here at least I can work and be functional." She grabbed the copy of Sarah's phone list and took a quick look at it. "But you can go, if you want. It's late, you must be tired."

"Nothing that some coffee can't cure. I've slept enough last night after I finished three chapters from the new book."

"Inspiration has struck again?"

"It never went away. I just needed a new character to channel it. I just got tired of Derrick's hyperbolic adventures around the world. I've spent more than ten years writing about him… I felt it was time for a change."

"Does this change have a name?" she asked, curious. After all, she was getting free spoilers straight from the source, it was a too good of an opportunity to miss it.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Not yet. I'm typing _asdfghjkl_ instead of her name, but I know she's going to be smart, beautiful… the kind of woman you would picture as a DA, not a cop. Can I have a look at that phone list?"

She handed him the sheets and leaned back on her chair, stretching her neck and arms in the vain attempt to release some of the tension that tightened her muscles. She needed to go for a run. Or find someone willing to spar with her. It had only been two days since her last outing for a jog and she already felt the physical need for it, but that thing with Castle shadowing her had tampered with her routine. At least he was behaving better than the first time.

"Have you checked this number?" he asked, pointing at a few lines he had underlined with a blue pen.

Beckett looked at it and shook her head. "Not yet. I can search for the owner." She typed the digits and started the search. "Chloe Richardson. Lives in New York but she's not a native. DMV states she lives in Queens. A friend?"

Castle was silent for a moment, thinking about what to say. "Maybe. I see more texting than actual calls so… yes, maybe a friend but not so close."

"We'll ask the ex-boyfriend."

"So? What do we do now?" asked Castle.

The detective pinched the bridge of her nose and looked at her watch. "We wait for morning. Unfortunately, the world's not a place for vampires."

"Yet," he said, fiddling with a paperclip.

That reply intrigued her. "What do you mean?"

The writer shrugged his shoulders. "Nothing… just that maybe one day science will find a way to allow people with your condition to live like any other person on the planet, without being forced to hide and live only during night."

"We have tricks Castle, it's not like we're going to burn to a cinder as soon as we get out in the sun… we're not the creatures from the books. Also, there's another strain of porphyria that's way worse."

He nodded. "Oh I know, I did my research. But… completely unrelated to the subject… I wonder why people that can afford not to work or work reduced hours decide to hire a nanny. They lose so much of their children's life that I doubt they know them at all."

Beckett fumbled a little bit with a pen. "I don't know Castle, my parents were pretty present when I was a kid, but those were other times. What did you do with your daughter?"

"I was a stay-at-home dad by choice and by craft. I was already an accomplished author when she was born so when Alexis' mother filed for divorce and moved to Los Angeles I had all the time I wanted to take care of her. When I had some obligation that forced me out, my mother would stay with her, and there was this teenage girl that lived downstairs, but only when Alexis was older. I never thought about getting a nanny. I thought: I'm lucky enough to have a job that allows me to be with my child. How can I let this opportunity go to waste?"

"How many times have you exactly been married?" she asked, out of curiosity.

"Twice. Signed the papers to finalize the second one three months ago. You?"

"Me? No, Castle, when it comes to marriage, I'm more of a one-and-done kind of girl," she revealed, completely sincere. That man had the ability to make her want to talk, even though she wasn't sure yet why. There was something in him that intrigued her, like no one before.

"Well, given your condition, you have all the time in the world to find the right one."

And then he said things like that and all her willing to talk flew away.

The pen in her hand flew so close to his ear he could feel the air moving against his skin, for the briefest second. "Right when I thought you could sustain a civil conversation."

"And you haven't seen the best of me."

She rolled her eyes. "Can't wait."

Around seven in the morning, the precinct started getting busy. People came in, phones started ringing and the sun peeked through the skyline, albeit covered by a thick layer of clouds that threatened to release a large amount of rain later that afternoon. The warrant for Brent Johnson's phone list and Sarah Manning's voicemail came through while Castle had gone out for breakfast. The same moment he set foot in the bullpen with two to-go coffees and two pastries, Beckett received the email with the audio files for Sarah's voicemail. They both couldn't help but smile when they heard them.

Despite her best efforts and Castle's attempts to act like the cool cop, Brent Johnson had little to nothing to tell them. Beckett could always call him back if further investigations would reveal his involvement in the matter, they hadn't actually wasted two hours after all. They had to check on Chloe Richardson; according to Brent, Chloe, Sarah and himself were old friends from college and they knew each other pretty well, so he knew where she lived and where she worked. Since both Esposito and Ryan were out, she decided to take care of it herself.

"Are you sure you can come out? I mean, it's still outside the safe zone," asked Castle during the elevator run.

She nodded. "Yes. The clouds are thick enough to act as a filter. I might have some redness on exposed skin if we stay out too long, but it won't be a great inconvenience."

"What about your eyes? From what I've seen the other day, they're quite sensitive."

He managed to bite his tongue before he could add _and beautiful_.

She pulled a pristine pair of black Ray Ban Wayfarer from her coat pocket. "Custom made. High UV filter. Same lenses used for snow goggles."

"Resourceful… I love it."

The doors opened and they walked through the busy lobby. "Come on, Brent said Chloe goes to the park every day before 1-PM, we need to hurry."

They found Chloe at a park near the building where both she and Sarah worked, just like Brent had told them. After asking another nanny to watch over her kid, they moved towards a bench far from the playground.

"You're here to ask about Sarah, right?"

She started questioning the nanny, asking the usual questions and trying to look around for hints of lies on her part. The young girl spoke freely, answering every question promptly, sometimes too promptly but one of her friends and coworkers had just been murdered, being nervous talking to a cop was more than understandable. And yet…

Beckett wrote everything down on her notepad. "Anything else? You work in the same building, is there a chance your employers might know anything about what happened?"

Chloe was startled by that question, as if she didn't want to answer it. "Not that I know of. I mean, Ian was probably at home but Diana was at work when it happened. I was here with Becca." She explained.

Beckett stopped writing midsentence, just for a fraction of second before she started scribbling again. Something wasn't right with what she was saying, and a quick glance up to Castle told her he had got to the same conclusion. There was something wrong with her tale. There was something about Chloe Richardson that went beyond the grieving friend and co-worker, suddenly she was jittery and tended to babble a little bit as she spoke. Also, she had started sweating when asked about her employers, but there was one tiny detail that she could pick up: she smelled of fear. Those were all signs that told her she was lying.

When she started feeling her skin itch a little bit, the detective told Chloe she would call in case she needed to ask her more question and she and Castle went back to the car. As soon as the screened windows blocked the damaging UV rays, the few that managed to escape the thick layer of clouds, she felt better. She relaxed on the seat with a long sigh of relief.

"Hurts a lot?" asked Castle.

"No, not much. " She told him. "It's more of an itch, it's bearable. It would hurt a lot without the clouds, I would be risking third degree burns, staying outside too long."

"Good. What do you think?"

"About Chloe? That she's lying. She said she was here when Sarah was killed, but we never told her when Lanie estimated the crime had been committed. She's involved, but I don't know how."

"You think a tiny girl like her could have killed Sarah?"

He phone buzzed. "I've seen way worse," she stated, pulling the phone out. "Hey Ryan, got anything?"

"Esposito and I managed to pull the CC footage from the doorman. We watched it and saw nothing weird. About forty minutes before the estimated TOD we saw Sarah going down to the laundry room. She never came back," explained the detective.

"Alright, we'll get something to eat and then we'll check the building out," she ended the call and looked at Castle. "How much of that did you hear?"

"Most of it," he downplayed it a little bit. "And your plan sounds fine. I'm quite hungry, to be honest."

She fired up the engine. "Oh I know, I could hear your guts grumbling while we were talking to Chloe. Come on, time for your first real cop meal."


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Beckett drove back to the precinct but stopped a couple of blocks away. She miraculously found a parking space close enough to her destination then killed the engine. "Come on. I hope you like cheeseburgers."

Castle lit up like a Christmas tree. "Cheeseburgers? You're kidding right?!"

"Good to know. Now come."

They got out of the car and walked inside a small restaurant he had never been to, clearly frequented by cops. The sign outside told him the name was Remy's, it looked like one of the last family owned fast food restaurants in town, neat, clean and deeply rooted in the past. The waitress behind the bar greeted them with a smile. Beckett was a loyal customer, she often came down for a quick meal or to pick up the take out for the team, so people that worked there knew her. The young girl waved at them to take a seat at any table they wanted. Most of the lunch crowd had already come and gone, so they had time and space to eat and then go back and check on Chloe's employers.

As they sat down, Castle relaxed and took the menu from the corner of the table. He thought Beckett would do the same, instead she took her notepad out of the inner pocket of her jacket and went straight to review her notes. He spied on her from the menu, saw the determined look on her face, the way she lightly picked at the skin of her thumb without scraping, or how she tapped with the disposable pen on the scribbled notes, as if to mark them better.

"Everything alright?" he asked.

She took a deep breath and straightened in her seat. "Yes, except that I need a gallon of coffee and I'm hungry enough to eat a raw steak."

"Was that a nod to your ancestors in literature or you're just really, really hungry?"

She shook her head and smiled. "Just hungry. And I love my steaks rare, that's true, but it has nothing to do with my condition. What's your choice?"

"You mentioned cheeseburgers, they must be good so I'll try one. And a gallon of coffee for me too," he replied, putting down the menu.

"Good to know. Now tell me; where is this thing going?"

Castle was about to reply when the waitress came and stopped him before he could. She took their order and Beckett's deadly stare went back at him. "So?"

"What do you mean _where_?" he asked. "I need to do research, I want the authenticity in this new book I'm writing, not the partially made up stuff I put in my old books. I can't just look it up on Wikipedia."

Two steaming cups of coffee appeared in front of them, seemingly out of nowhere. The waitress came and went, saying nothing.

"Why follow me? There are hundreds of other detectives with less complicated time schedules than mine. You came to the precinct last night and didn't even call your daughter this morning to say hi before she got to school, and last night you were wondering how people could rely on nannies to take care of their children."

Her argument made sense. But so did his reply.

"I know what I said, and to my defense, I actually called Alexis while I was gone to pick up breakfast, right before she went out. And I decided to follow you because…" he stopped mid-sentence and started fiddling with the brim of the cup, careful not to spill the coffee. "Look Beckett… I know I'm a nuisance. You have no idea how many times my own daughter told me to get the hell out of the house because I was being a smartass with her friends, annoying the hell out of them. That's who I am, I'm one of those people that simply love to be the comic relief of the situation. But the other day, when you came to my release party… you saved me!"

"Saved you?"

He nodded. "Yes. I was bored. I was bored to death by all that stuff. It's been like that for years;: I write a book, I do press stuff, signing sessions with women who haven't read a single line of literature in their whole life asking me to sign their chests. Over and over again, year after year, book after book. When we were married, Gina used to keep me on a very short leash, making me write all day and besides what I wrote when I was in college, I think the books I wrote during our marriage were the worst I've ever produced. I had no time to do the research I wanted! Now I have the chance to make something better, write something better, more grounded in reality." he stated, pouring his heart in his words.

It was true; the four books he had written while he and Gina were married were pretty much crap, at least from his point of view, not the critics'. Practically no research done, mechanically written like a programmer writes strings of pre-determined code when creating web sites. The stories were written like a Lego house, pre-made blocks of plastic that together formed a book long enough to be sold.

To his eyes, they were nothing more than dull words printed on paper. He was more proud of his latest book, the first one he had wrote in complete freedom after he and Gina had broken up, although it meant he had to kill Derrick.

"Why follow me then? There are thousands of retired cops in this city, I'm sure you can afford to ask one of them to be your adviser."

He shook his head. His hair flopped a little bit out of place, but he put it back with one quick swipe of his hand. "Retired cops would tell me how things worked during their time in the force. Some of them don't even know about forensic evidences and I've met detectives that worked in the seventies and eighties that didn't know what a DNA test is. You brought me to the morgue, even if I didn't ask it. You're letting me tail you, bearing my presence although I'm pissing you off like hell and you allow me to be part of the investigation. That's what I need."

"The Mayor ordered me to take you with me," she argued.

"As an observer. That's what I asked him. I wanted to come with you as an observer. You were the one that pulled me in and started asking me questions, discussing the detail of the case with me."

He noticed the slightest flinch on her part, a minor twitch of her eye, as if she had just realized that she had been the one allowing him to be involved in the case and not just shadow her.

"Alright. You win this round. Just be aware that I have a gun and I won't hesitate to use it."

"Cross my heart and hope to die," he replied. "Are we OK?"

"Yes we are. Now, what do you think about it?" she asked, closing the notepad with a soft thud.

"About what?"

Beckett rolled her eyes. "About the case."

Their plates arrived in that moment, interrupting him once again. They thanked the waitress and went back to their conversation. "I think Mr. Peterson could have a motive."

The detective added some ketchup to the fries. "As in they had a tryst? Worth checking but I have to be honest, he's the kind of man that has an airtight alibi and I have the feeling he's not involved, but I'll have it checked out."

"You feel he's not involved because up to now there are no evidences pointing at him or because…" his voice trailed off.

"The innate ability of vampires to read body language and have a deeper perception of how people act? A bit of both," she stated.

"Right," he tried a bite of his cheeseburger and let out a moan of deep satisfaction. "Wow, you were right. This is really good."

"Told you. I was wondering about Chloe. I know it sounds weird but… She changed demeanor too quickly when I asked about her employers."

"Oh, I thought it was only a figment of my imagination."

She shook her head. "No, don't worry. You got it right. It was kind of impossible not to notice it though. This case is strange, really, I have to say it. I keep having thoughts about it but in the end they make no sense."

"Maybe you just need to rest for a bit. You've been up and about for nearly a day, you must be tired. Why don't we concentrate on something else for a while, at least now while we eat?"

She chewed a little bit and swallowed. "That would be nice. I'm so used to eating while reviewing the case notes that this feels odd. But now that you suggest a change of subject; why did you kill Derrick?"

She asked it in such an offended tone it didn't take it much more to realize that she was more than a fan of the genre, as she had stated days before. Detective Kate Beckett was a fan of his books. That was the same reaction his editor had when he had turned the last chapter in for reviewing, the same question, albeit in a different tone, that Gina had asked ten minutes after the email had been sent.

"Speed reader?" he asked.

Beckett nodded. "Comes with my condition:" And with being a fan. "So?"

"Boredom. I told you, I was bored. His adventures were becoming a parody of what they were in the beginning. I wasn't inspired, it was like I was simply copying something that had already been written. To be honest, that's not how I like to work;" he explained.

"But why killing him in such a messy way? I mean… didn't it feel like killing your own son or something?"

"Killing Clara was worse, that's why I brought her back. Killing Derrick… it was needed. Like Ned Stark's death in Game Of Thrones. And to be completely honest, I may still pick him up again, if inspiration strikes again in the future. He's a CIA affiliate after all, those people can fake someone's death."

Beckett shook her head and ate the last piece of her burger. "Then what? You'll have a group of eco-terrorists based in Middle East kidnap his body and throw him in a pit full of alchemical products to resurrect him so an immortal warlord can use him for his dirty deeds?

By the time she had stopped speaking, Castle had been rendered speechless. "Did you just… were you talking about Ra's al Ghul?"

"Well, maybe…"

Shocked and wide-eyed, like a deer caught in the headlights, he blurted out the most idiotic phrase he could have said in that moment. "Marry me."

He regretted it the moment those two words left his mouth.

But contrary to his expectations, Beckett laughed so hard she nearly bent in two. "No thank you," she said through fits of laughter. "I'm quite good as I am now."

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Quickly straightening herself, she pulled it and answered it. A short conversation followed. Once it was over, he saw her sigh, loudly, and her eyes turned from slightly amused to definitely irritated. "I've got to go. The DA taking care of one of my cases needs to review it before trial tomorrow. Let's finish so I can take you back to the precinct."

An hour later, Castle was back at home. Only when the front door of the loft was closed behind him he felt a slight sense of weariness wash over him. If Beckett hadn't slept in nearly a day, the same went for him. Maybe he had been awake longer, writing those two chapters that had made his editor so happy he was sure she was dancing on her desk chair back at Black Pawn headquarters.

A quick shower and a change of clothes later, there was a fresh cup of good coffee beside his laptop and he was back at work, from his point of view. He had grabbed a copy of the DVD with the security camera footage and had burned a copy, clearly intended to be useful even while Beckett was occupied.

But Ryan was right. There wasn't much in those videos. Just a normal girl that twentyfour hours earlier was alive and now wasn't, using an elevator. That's all. But there was something in those videos that didn't match, something that made his mind tick that intrigued him. He just needed to find out what it was.

Right in that moment, his mother appeared on the doorstep of his study. "Watching something interesting?"

He mumbled something unintelligible. "An elevator."

"Must be a hell of an elevator if you're looking at it so intensely," she said, sitting in one of the chairs in front of his desk.

"It's the last time our victim was seen alive," he explained.

"Oh Richard, please, you have to stop stealing evidence from the precinct. That poor girl is going to be more trouble than you, if they find out what you are doing!"

"I didn't steal it! I burned a copy of the DVD!"

Alexis head popped in the doorway. "What DVD?"

"Your father is stealing evidence again," replied Martha. "Has he raised your allowance?"

His daughter gleefully skipped inside his study and walked beside him. "No, he hasn't. Really Dad, you stole evidences once already, aren't you afraid Detective Beckett is going to arrest you?"

He shook his head. "Not this time. I'm actively working on the case now. Beckett's just busy right now. Not exactly happy about it, but busy."

"Looking for something interesting?" asked Alexis again.

Castle shrugged his shoulders, feeling a little tightness in his neck. He needed some sleep. "I don't know. One of the detectives found this footage and it shows only the victim going down, up and down again. Nothing else."

"Uh, Dad? Look at the time stamp; when she goes down the second time it takes her more time."

Castle watched the two videos again, this time putting them side by side for comparison. The second time Sarah went down it took her five seconds longer. The time stamps didn't coincide. "Five seconds more... how many floors higher?"

"Two, maybe three, depends on the speed," replied Martha.

Quickly, he pulled his phone and sent a text message to Beckett. _Meet me at the crime scene building, I think I've found something in the security footage._

He was on his way there when Beckett replied to his text with an angry sequence of _What the hell_, before saying she was on her way there. Once she arrived, Castle dragged her inside the elevator and started it. Staying silent through the barrage of question she kept asking during the short ride, he looked at his stopwatch and took the time of the ride to the twelfth floor then down to the basement, and from there up to the fifteenth.

"There. Five seconds longer than going to the floor where the Petersons live. Just like in the videos."

Beckett sighed. "You stole evidence again?"

He pulled the DVD he had burned out of his jacket and handed it to her. "Borrowed. I made a copy, here it is. But here's what I found; the second time she came down, it wasn't from the Petersons' place. The elevator trip took five seconds more. She came from up here, the fifteenth floor. I bet Chloe Richardson works here."

She checked through her notes. "You're right, she works here for the Harris family. Come, let's go check it out."

What happened next was nearly absurd. First they find the family they were looking for then proceeded with the routine questioning about the presumed time of death of Sarah Manning and why she might have come up to that floor at that hour, but after Castle had disappeared in the bathroom with one of the lamest excuse Beckett had ever heard, a cellphone started ringing, blasting a cheerful pop song out of its tiny speaker. She saw Castle reappear from the bathroom holding his own phone in his hand just in time to see Mrs. Harris come back from the master bedroom.

Considering the way she was looking at her husband, that wasn't her phone.

Things get tough when people know the rules, Castle saw it pretty clearly on Beckett's frustrated look when she came out of the interrogation room after she had to let Harris go. He had a lawyer, a good one, had asked for his presence immediately and that shark had sealed his mouth shut. She had got nothing out of him except an early declaration of innocence. He had not confirmed or denied a relationship with Sarah, but his wife had found her phone beneath their bed, there were little doubts she had lost it while she had a friendly chat with him over a coffee. He said nothing though, so they had nothing, except the theory that wanted him to be both Chloe' and Sarah's lover, and that Chloe had developed a morbid obsession for Ian that burst in a violent jealous rage over Sarah.

"Can't you call Chloe in and question her again?" he asked after a long while spent staring silently at the murder board. "I mean... you saw the photos, she's obsessed with him."

"I know, but it's not that easy. We can't just walk in and start asking her if she had a relationship with Harris, you saw how she reacted the moment we asked about him this morning. Also, it's just a theory based on a sensation, we don't have anything concrete to support it."

Castle was sure Beckett had carefully avoided to tell him about the faint yet present and distinctive scent that proved that Chloe spent more time than what was acceptable in her employer's master bedroom, a trail he was certain she had picked up when they were checking for other signs of Sarah's presence. She had probably omitted to mention it because, after all, for all she knew he wasn't able to pick it up.

He caught her stifling a yawn when she thought he wasn't looking. "Tired?" he asked.

"I've been up for more than twenty- four hours and while it's true that we need less sleep than a normal human being, after nearly thirty hours awake we start getting tired too."

"Coffee can't keep people up for too long, no matter what. Why don't we go home, catch some sleep and start over again tomorrow morning, fresh eyes and all?"

It was a good idea. They both needed some sleep, they were tired and thinking coherently had become a hard fest for both of them. Beckett nodded. No way she could disagree with him, it was written on their faces that they needed some rest to figure how to close this case. They had both risen from their seats, picking up their things when Esposito's desk phone rang. A moment later he hung up. "Yo Beckett, it was the doorman from the Harris' building. Said Diana Harris called him, someone has come in the apartment and she heard her husband fighting with someone."

"Where is she?"

"Barricaded in the bathroom, with her daughter. The doorman told her to stay there and lock the door then he called 911. Any ideas?"

She looked at Castle and they both nodded. Chloe. "Yes. Call dispatch for reinforcements, I'm going there now."

During the car ride to the scene, she pushed the engine as much as she could in the evening traffic. They managed to arrive there in ten minutes, too long for her tastes. If Chloe's obsession had turned violent towards Sarah, nothing would stop her from trying to hurt Ian's wife and daughter whose only fault was being his family, something that kept him from being completely hers. They were obstacles on her path to reach her goal.

Completely forgoing the elevator, Beckett for once exploited her superhuman skills and ran upstairs, gun in hand and ready to shoot in case she needed it. She arrived at the Harris's apartment much faster.

The door was open, so she entered, walking carefully with her back against the wall and her gun readied. In the living room, she found an unconscious Ian Harris, a visible wound on his forehead that was rapidly bruising. She checked his pulse, strong and steady, then went on to look for. Chloe in the apartment. There were no traces of her.

"Mrs. Harris this is Detective Beckett," she spoke just outside the bathroom door. "You can come out now, you're safe."

The door opened and Diana and Becca came out, visibly upset and scared. "She's gone?"

Beckett nodded. "She's not here, we'll start looking for her as soon as we can get you to safety."

Two uniforms arrived in that moment, with Castle in tow. "Everything alright?" he asked.

"For now. Call an ambulance then escort Mrs. Harris and her daughter to the precinct, I'll launch an APB for Chloe as soon as we get back to the 12th."

Castle shook his head. "No need. She never left the building. She's in the basement, in the laundry room."

Beckett couldn't help but be slightly annoyed by that intrusion. "How do you even know?"

He really wanted to answer with the truth, telling her he had picked up a very recent trail of her scent in the lobby, and that it went in the direction of the basement, but he bit his tongue and went for a quick half-truth. "While waiting for the elevator I saw a trail of blood on the floor going in that direction. There's some here too, right outside the door in the corridor. She's bleeding and she left those traces."

Beckett peeked out the door and saw the smudged trail of blood going from the apartment to the elevator. "You two stay here," she said to the uniformed cops. "I'll go downstairs. Castle, come with me, but if you get in the way I swear I'll shoot you."

Silently, he nodded and followed her. He was smart enough to follow her instructions in cases of emergency, she had to give him that. She just hoped he wouldn't try anything heroic as the other day with Tisdale.

As they approached the laundry room, the smell of blood became more intense and Beckett found herself with trembling hands and that tingling sensation she always had in her lips when she was near fresh blood, be it human or not. The inhuman instinct to bite and feed on something raw that came when she was tired, stressed, and too close to a fresh source. She hated it. It was the only side of her conditions she really despised, because this part of the legends was true. Vampires did feed on blood, sometimes. Like a thirsty person is instinctively guided to seek a source of water, a person with her conditions sought a source of iron and protein as fresh as possible; be it an almost raw steak or the pulsing jugular of a human being.

"What's your plan?" he asked.

"To get everyone out of here alive."

Before entering the room where Chloe had taken refuge, she stopped, one hand on the door handle and the other gripping her gun in an attempt to stop the trembling. She took a deep breath then pulled the door open.

Chloe was inside, sitting on a table with a knife in her hand. The blood came from multiple cuts she was inflicting to her thigh. When the door opened, the nanny jolted in her precarious seat and raised the knife towards the detective. "Stand back."

Knowing perfectly well that she wasn't a big threat to her, or to Castle if he stayed behind the door, Beckett raised her hands, showing her gun and making sure she saw her finger away from the trigger. "Chloe, stop. We know what happened. There's no need to act like this, just give me the knife and come with me."

"You know?"

Beckett nodded as she knelt and placed the gun on the concrete floor. "We know you love Ian. We know he betrayed you with Sarah and that you killed her here. It was an accident, wasn't it? You didn't mean to kill her."

Chloe nodded. "I just wanted to talk to her. I wanted to ask her to back away from him. When she said no I was just… so angry… I grabbed the bleach and hit her with it. Next thing I know, I was pushing her inside the clothes dryer."

"You were shocked. You didn't know what to do, so you tried to hide. But why attack Ian tonight?"

There was a long pause of complete silence. Chloe had the blade on her thigh again, slowly slicing the skin through the thin fabric of her jeans. Beckett dared to glance at the door and saw that Castle had silently come in, but was standing in the doorway, doing absolutely nothing but observing. Still an idiot, though less annoying. As long as he didn't get in her way, she could deal with him. She brought her attention back to Chloe, waiting for an answer.

"I'm pregnant."

The confession came like a lighting bolt in a clear sky. And it made things a lot clearer.

"OK. Chloe, listen to me. What you're doing… it won't do you any good. Ian was a douchebag, this is all his fault. He broke your heart and you were upset. And that's OK. If you come with me we can figure it out together. Put the knife down and let me help you."

Chloe's hand trembled, much like her own, then the girl let out a strangled breath and the knife fell to the floor. Promptly, she stood and walked towards her, kicking the knife out of the way.

She saw Castle start breathing again in the corner, then Esposito rushed inside with Ryan in tow. From then on, it was only a matter of following protocol. Chloe was arrested, read her rights, and was escorted to holding at the precinct for a quick check up and medication for her thigh. Just a normal arrest for something that could have been avoided altogether.

She hated cases like this, with all her heart.

She shook her head in barely disguised disgust as the paramedics rolled the gurney with an unconscious Ian Harris from the front door. A moment later, a plastic cup of steaming coffee appeared in front of her.

Castle.

"Thank you," she said, taking the cup from his hand. "I really needed it."

"I had the feeling. I saw you shaking a little bit before you got in that room. Everything alright?"

Beckett nodded. "Yes. I'm just tired. I haven't slept in thirty hours or so, smell of blood tends to make me jittery when I'm tired."

He nodded. "Wanna grab something to eat before going home?"

"No, thanks. I'll be fine once I get home and get my iron supplements."

"What about the soft surface of your bed and a warm duvet? You look like you just came out from a grave."

That made her laugh. Usually vampire jokes made her sick to her stomach because they tended to be insulting and gross. This one was just… it just came in the right place at the right time. She did feel like she had just come out from a grave. And the idea to just go to bed and sleep until next afternoon wasn't bad at all.

"That was a good one Castle, I have to admit it. I think I'll just check a couple of things at the precinct then go home. You can go too, if you want. I'll call when the next body drops."

"Alright," he agreed. "Maybe I'll still be in time to see my daughter before she goes to bed. You really have weird work hours."

"Told you. Come on, I'll take you home."

* * *

><p><em>Little author note (in case you haven't noticed, I've spent years writing about Star Wars): THE FREAKING TEASER TRAILER FOR EPISODE VII IS AWESOME!<em>


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

A month after the nanny case, Castle was starting to realize why so many cops suffered from issues such as depression and anything related.

Shadowing Detective Beckett was gruesome, and not only because of her weird schedule but also because of the emotional stress she had to endure every day that transferred to him, for obvious reasons. In less than a month he had seen some of the worst examples of humanity he could think of and all the ways they had tried to defy the law.

The second case they worked together, the one that involved a group of rich brats from private school and a sociopath that just wanted to prove he could commit the perfect murder, hit pretty close to home. Not only because he had gone to that same school, although he was expelled before he could complete his term there, but most of all because Alexis went to that type of school.

That case got him thinking for a while about the new generations and the fixation some of those kids had with being always online and sharing everything they did. It had been the key to solve the case, the only aspect their young killer hadn't thought about, and it made him wonder if his own obsession for every hi-tech gizmo invented was something good or bad. His Twitter account had a growing number of followers, he liked to share funny tidbits of his life, vague pictures of what was happening around him, but these kids shared everything they had on their phones.

And if he had to judge that using his own daughter as a comparison, their cell phones were their lives.

Then there was the case of the dead politician, the dirty background of the whole story made him sick to his stomach multiple times as they worked on it. It reminded him a little of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair on a smaller scale, even though it involved an escort instead of a young intern, with the faithful wife and everything. If it hadn't turned out to be a horrible mask that hid the hypocrisy behind politics and all that turned around it, it could have even looked like a nice thing to see, in a society that sees divorce as an easy and, everything considered, socially acceptable way out.

That was the dark side of the whole thing.

On the bright one though, he was having fun. Beckett was closed off, he wasn't sure if it was because of her job, her condition or the event in her life that had caused her to become a cop, but from time to time she opened up and sometimes he managed to make her smile. There had been some funny moments at the precinct, like when he had ordered the state of the art espresso machine for the break room, or her nearly hysterical reaction when she had realized he was practically hiding from his publisher on the day Storm Fall was released.

Then there was the reading and signing session right after they had closed the case. But that was some material he preferred to keep for more late night activities.

What mattered the most were the ideas flowing like a river from his mind, through his fingers and straight to his computer, which made Gina happy and off his back. He had already outlined the whole novel, chose the characters, named a few and gave the two protagonists a full background - still subjects to changes, even radical if inspiration struck. Finally, Kate Beckett's alter ego had a name: Nikki Heat. Strong like the character, easy to remember, perfect for book titles. He also had the perfect name for his own alter ego, though he was still working on the first name, which sent his editor nuts as she wanted the names to start the first steps of the promotional campaign. Every email in reply to the draft of a chapter asked for Rook's first name. Still nothing.

He had sent in six drafts and one almost definitive chapter in record time. He was progressing well, faster than most of his previous books. He had a new, rather close deadline, but he was well ahead of it, there was nothing keeping him from writing, except for the unusual hours he spent at the precinct.

Lucky for him he had always been a night owl, ever since he was a teenager.

He was holed in his office, feet propped on the edge of his desk typing word after word as he created a very intricate action scene between a very naked Nikki and a Polish thug three times her size when a knock on the door startled him out of his self-induced trance.

"Come in," he said, after he regained some sort of composure.

The door opened and his mother walked in. "How are you doing, kiddo?"

He shrugged his shoulders and closed the computer. "Not bad."

"Dinner's almost ready, Alexis is taking care of it." She sat down on a chair on the other side of his desk. "You're writing a lot these days," she said, stating the obvious.

Castle nodded and set the laptop on the wooden surface before sitting up straight. "Yeah… I think I've found my rhythm again."

Martha nodded, clearly pleased to hear this. "It's good to know but Richard, I wanted to talk to you about it."

"About what?"

"About this arrangement. Richard, I can see this is good for you, you haven't been this focused on your writing in years but… are you sure you're doing the right thing? You still manage to be home for every meal with Alexis, but have you thought about how disruptive this situation is for that poor girl?" she explained, voicing her doubts about her son's partnership with the NYPD. A partnership he knew perfectly well he had forced on that nice detective who was strong enough to bear with him almost every day. Because that's what his mother was telling him.

"Detective Beckett is fine, she doesn't have any problem with me hanging around the precinct."

"Are you sure about that?"

He nodded. "We talked about it. Multiple times. She knows I'm a jackass sometimes and she punishes me for it when I deserve it," he carefully omitted the fact that he acted like a jackass most of the time, except when seriousness was needed. "You have no idea how driven she is, she's good for me. I'm not joking, she's what I needed."

"And you? Are you good for her?"

The question came out of nowhere, he wasn't expecting it. Was he good for her, with his nuisance, his poking and prodding, the off-time jokes and all the little things that annoyed her out of her mind but he insisted on doing and saying? Sometimes he was the plucky sidekick everyone found annoying and most of the times his theories were just castles in the air, grounded into nothing, and he knew it. He liked to play, lighten the mood just enough so the detectives could rest their minds for a moment.

Was that something good for them? He liked to think it was.

"Yes Mother. I am."

"I really hope your Nikki Heat comes out at least half as good as Detective Beckett is, because otherwise you'd be in horrible trouble."

"I'm trying to do her justice but I fear Nikki will never be as great as Beckett," he revealed, his voice dropping an octave without conscious acting.

He knew Martha had picked the slightly sad tone in his voice, she knew him all too well and could read his signals. After all, she was his mother, she could read him like an open book. "What do you mean?"

"I'm writing Nikki as a normal human being. Beckett has vampire-related porphyria, but I can't write it in the novel."

He saw the realization striking her, like a sparkle in her eyes. "Oh. And does she know about…"

"No. There's no need for her to know. I can deal with my own condition without aggravating her own. She's already in a very precarious place, being unable to stay out in direct sunlight for long periods of time like any other cop. I don't want her to worry about the risk of a werewolf turning without warning."

"Oh Richard you stopped changing without warning when you were eighteen, the last time you changed was when Meredith served you the divorce papers, please. I think she has the right to know who she's working with!"

Castle growled and run his hands in his hair, pulling a little bit when he reached the nape of his neck. "Mother, please. We're adults and we can deal with ourselves. We don't need a babysitter."

"But sometimes you need a mother. Richard, really, you need to tell her. You want to be good for her? Start with being sincere. She was with you, why don't you repay her with a little bit of trust? I'm sure she won't freak out."

He was more than sure she wouldn't freak out. Beckett wasn't the type of person that would be upset in front of a well-mannered werewolf. But his mother was right, one day or another he'd had to tell her about his own condition.

"Think about it Richard. It's up to you, I can't force you like when you were a child. I can only suggest to you what I think is right."

"Thank you Mother, I appreciate it. But there's no need for her to know. I've kept it for a restricted circle of people all my life. No need to include her in it."

Nodding, Martha stood and walked out of the room. "We'll call you when dinner is ready."

When she closed the door behind her back, the office plunged in thick silence, leaving Castle alone with his thoughts. His mother was right, if they worked together he needed to be sincere with Beckett, she was always worrying about his safety when there was no need to, he could handle himself pretty well. But what if he told her and she freaked out? After all he could potentially cause an enormous amount of damage to people and objects if he lost it, she had the right to know he was a walking ticking time bomb. People like him with the apparent lycanthropy gene, that piece of genetic code that allowed them to transform into a big, burly, hairy human-canine hybrids, were able to shred steel as if it was paper, with sharp talons and jaws strong enough they could rip the head off another human with a couple of bites.

He didn't know why people were more scared of vampires than werewolves, because he was damn scared of what he could do. Not that he had ever hurt anyone when he had changed, but the mere possibility made his skin crawl.

He despised his condition with all his heart and tried to ignore it as much as he could, and telling Beckett about it would mean needing to answer a lot of questions he preferred to keep private. He still dreaded the memory of Meredith freaking out when he blurted it out right after she had revealed she was pregnant with Alexis. The barrage of accusations and subsequent questions had nearly made him inadvertently change because of the sudden stress. Only years of self-conditioning had avoided a more chaotic turn of the events.

Luckily, his daughter hadn't inherited the whole pool of genes of lycanthropy. She was one of the latent ones, she displayed some of the characteristics, like the perfect health and heightened senses, but she was unable to turn. One less thing to worry about. He didn't want her to go through what he endured when he was a teenager and young adult.

But most of all, he didn't want to see Beckett's reaction, whatever it would be. Not if he could avoid it.

Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork.

So much for trying to stay up to date and not relegating the filling of all the forms to the end of the case.

Beckett was metaphorically submerged with paperwork. Some was still related to the dead nanny case, she didn't have the time after the case had been closed, a little pile of not-so-important forms, and the bigger, more important pile related to case they had just closed.

That night she was bound to her desk, completely out of her natural environment, pen in hand and coffee cup kept full on the table. And the continuous bored sighs she couldn't keep in check.

She hated paperwork.

At least she wasn't alone in her boredom; Esposito had stayed late too, filling his own pile of forms that rested on his desk. Misery loves company. Ryan instead, as the good school boy he was, always completed his paperwork at the end of each day, making it easier and faster for him to deal with the insane amount of red tape cops had to deal with when they closed their cases.

Beckett wasn't as diligent as him, nor was Esposito, so they were paying the price of their laziness.

Being head of the team, Beckett had to deal with the majority of the bureaucracy. The ton of shit 1PP dumped each year on them was amazing… she was waiting for the day they'd decide to turn to a digital method, because it would cut the rate of deforestation for production of paper… a lot.

Around midnight Esposito left. She had caught him dozing off on his desk a couple of times and ordered him to go away and get some rest. He had done much of the leg work for the past case, dumpster diving included, without catching much sleep in the meantime, and technically he wasn't on duty that night, only on call, so he could go home and rest. Hoping no body would drop.

Three AM and she was finally finished. And bored out of her mind. She was almost hoping someone would be murdered so she could get out and do something. When she had a crime to solve everything made sense, even the most impossible set of evidence after a while could be put together into something that made sense. Maybe not much, most of all regarding motives, but in the end it was a rare event for her to not solve a case. Their team had a rate of solved case so high it kept the precinct at the top of the efficiency list of homicides for the entire city.

Bored out of her mind and not exactly happy with the perspective of going home only to be called again if a body dropped, Beckett decided to stay a couple of hours longer than she initially intended, so she walked to the break room in long strides, the soft click of her heels on the wooden floor echoed in the nearly empty bullpen like the ticking of a clock. The sound reminded her of the old clock at her grandparents' house, a noise so loud to her sensitive ears it nearly drove her mad when she was learning to control her senses.

Those were tough times.

A uniform walking into the break room brought her back to the present. She eyed the new, expensive coffee maker that made her go nuts each time she tried to operate it, but with Castle out of sight she was free to try again without him interfering. It took her a couple of attempts but in the end she made it work, just in time to return at her desk, when the phone rang.

"Beckett."

"Hi Kate, it's Lanie."

"What are you doing up at this hour?"

She heard a displeased grunt on the line. "Had to come in when someone on the night shift got food poisoning and had to go home. I've just finished his autopsy and I'm done with the cleaning too. You're on call right? Want to come down? I need to talk to you."

"Everything alright?" she asked.

"Just bored and in need for some girl talk. That's all."

Beckett grabbed her jacket and quickly drove down to the morgue. New York had some serious issues with traffic during the day but at night there were little problems. Fourteen minutes later she was sitting on a pristine clean autopsy table with Lanie setting up her instruments ready for the next body.

"So?"

"What's going on between you and Writer Boy?" asked the ME, always straight to the point.

"Uh, nothing?" she replied, not exactly happy with the question. "What should be going on between us?"

"I don't know, maybe some sex? Have you even seen the way he looks at you? That boy is smitten!"

Kate groaned. "Not you too, please! I have enough of Espo and Ryan throwing innuendos every time I go out with him tailing me, I don't need your voice added to the choir."

"How is he doing though? Still the class clown of the first day?"

"Not so often. I mean, he's still a bit of a jerk but he's learned to refrain from doing it when we're with witnesses and suspects... He's still kind of annoying from time to time."

Lanie looked up from the tray she was preparing. "And the rest of the time?"

Beckett thought for a moment before answering. "The rest of the time he's a nice guy. He's got a daughter, you know, and he calls or texts her all the time while he's with me, he brings me coffee nearly every time I call him... Except when he's the class clown he's nice to hang out with." She looked down at the hem of her shirt as she twisted it between her fingers. "He's nice enough and he's very perceptive and careful of what I do."

"Of what you do? You told him about your... "

"Not about my mother, but my condition. When we arrested Tisdale it was broad daylight and I didn't have my sunglasses so... he realized it by himself when sunlight blinded me bad enough I cursed," she explained, recalling those events that had taken place five weeks before but felt like a lifetime ago. "He didn't even flinch, he just shielded me with his jacket and waited until I was fine."

"Girl, listen to me. I know you have eternity and some spare time ahead of you but, seriously that guy's a keeper. He's your favorite author, he's smart and nice and didn't freak out when he realized you're a vampire... What do you want more?"

"My mother's murderer behind bars and the key to his cell thrown in the Hudson River," Beckett spat those words out as if they were venomous.

Beckett wasn't surprised when Lanie wasn't taken aback by those cruel words, she knew all too well about her obsession about her mother's death her her struggle to keep herself from diving into that bottomless pit again. "Ever thought about letting go a little bit? Have you even been out with someone different from your father and me since Will left for Boston?" Kate knew very well that Lanie was well aware of the answer. No, she hadn't. "Kate, I care about you like a sister, and it kills me to see you like this. You're a control freak, we get it, but you really need to let it go sometimes. Just have fun for once, it won't kill you!"

"Not with Castle though!" replied Kate.

"Why the hell not? Really, you two look good together. How many man have you met that didn't run away screaming bloody murder when you told them you are a vampire?"

She could count them on one hand. Lanie, Montgomery, Ryan (who had a werewolf cousin), and Castle. Esposito had backed away a couple of steps as knee-jerk reflex before calming down. "Maybe you're right but… I don't think it's a good thing."

"What? Two consensual adults having fun isn't good?"

"He's not my type, that's all. I'm not into playboys with the attention span of a five year old child."

Lanie sighed and covered the now ready tray with a surgical towel. "That's why he's exactly the type of man you need."

"You know… Now that you're making me think about it… he gets me to talk," stated Kate, kind of out of the blue.

That caught Lanie's attention. "He gets you to talk? What do you mean?"

Beckett shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know… he's a good listener. Sometimes he interrupts too often but he's good at listening. And notices things. He's really perceiving, everything considered. He thinks outside the box, like that idea he had with the rug the other day, about sending pictures of it to his… whatever she was. It didn't lead us to anything but at least it was a good idea I didn't have. It's like he hides behind a mask, like the class clown is just an act. I think he would be a good cop, if only he could be more serious about it."

Lanie chuckled. "And you still hold back? Kate, seriously. You're a hypocrite. A lonely hypocrite that dressed up to upset him at his reading, the other day. All dressed to the nines and you still haven't jumped his bones. What happened to the girl that spent nearly every Friday night at the CBGB?"

"Shut down activity when Patti Smith played the last time before CBGB closed. Let's make a deal; I might consider him as something more than an idiot that shadows me as an excuse to get in my pants, the day he'll stop calling prostitutes in order to get us to interrogate them, OK?"

"Deal," replied Lanie. "For now. Come on, there's a bar around the corner that's open all night. Let's wait for a body in front of a cupcake."


End file.
